Good personal finance spreadsheets are hard to find on the web because sploggers monopolize the search results. Still, I’ve managed to collect links to a stack of them that I’d like to share.
Spreadsheets more useful than web-based calculators because:
- You can modify the fields and formats to meet your own needs,
- You can create “what-if” scenarios by making copies of a sheet, and
- You can save the data for later use.
The following links are all real sites from real people with real useful information to share.
- I mentioned PearBudget in a previous entry. It’s an excellent (though elaborate) budgeting spreadsheet.
- If you find PearBudget intimidating, this morning Lifehacker pointed to another spreadsheet-based budgeting system. It’s bare-bones, which may appeal to some.
- Foxway offers a budget tracker spreadsheet that is somewhere between the previous two in complexity. It keeps all expenses for a single year on one page. (For some reason the file has an .XLR extension; you’ll need to change it to .XLS to open it.)
- Bankrate offers its own budget spreadsheet, though I don’t find it as useful as the others.
- If, like me, you’re following the debt snowball method of debt reduction, check out Mr. Peanut’s Debt Snowball Calculator.
- Patrick Holt has created a ginormous spreadsheet filled with all manner of personal finance calculators. This thing is mammoth.
- It’s Your Money offers 22 different personal finance spreadsheets, including several related to auto expenses.
- As one might expect, Microsoft offers many excellent personal finance spreadsheets for free download. These are more polished than most of the home-brewed spreadsheets I’ve listed, though not necessarily as useful. (Addendum: more here.)
- Ask the Builder has a column about saving for a rainy day so that home repairs don’t take you by surprise. There’s no downloadable spreadsheet here, but there’s brief mention (and an image) of one that you can easily recreate on your own. (Besides: this is an excellent column for homeowners.)
- Num Sum has a huge collection of spreadsheets, but most of them are junk. If you have patience, you can sift through to find some gems, such as this home maintenance schedule. Note that Num Sum spreadsheets are not downloadable, and that registration is required to use them.
- And from Get Rich Slowly, you can download Vintek’s power of compounding spreadsheet and the default Excel amortization table, a useful loan calculator. (Vintek sent me a generic revised version of his spreadsheet, which I’m dubbing the magic of compound returns spreadsheet.)
There must be thousands of other great personal finance spreadsheets out there. I’ll share the best of those I find.
You have a good point about web-based calculators. But I think I made my calculators general enough for most people. My federal tax calculator will even calculate for 4 kinds of filing status.
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[...] Get Rich Slowly » Handy Personal Finance Spreadsheets (tags: spreadsheet personal finance budget) [...]
[...] This week’s Blog of the Week is GetRichSlowly. Although this blog is relatively new, it gets a lot of traffic. I just found this blog this week when I noticed that the author linked to one of my posts. Anyway, it is a nicely-written blog with cool posts like this one, which is a list of useful spreadsheets and this one, which offers tips for selling on eBay. I thought it was funny that the book he mentions selling, The Hidden Game of Baseball, is the same book I picked up at my local library (in perfect condition) for $1.00! He sold his for $71. [...]
[...] This blog has a list of Personal Finance Spreadsheets which are very good and quite useful. [...]
[...] Getting Rich Slowly has a great collection of personal finance spreadsheets you can use for budgeting, debt reduction, personal finance calculations, track auto expenses, home maintenance schedules, and the magic of compound returns. [...]
My modest contribution to your collection, a spreadsheet that I use to calculate savings goals: http://jason.379.com/savings_goals
I hope you find it useful. Keep up the great writing!
[...] I found this fantastic list via downloadsquad.com that lists more financial spreadsheets that you’ll know what to do with! They’ll help you with budgeting, expenditure tracking, debt reduction, and tons more. Quicken and Microsoft Money aren’t the only options out there and often those programs don’t fit everyone’s way of thinking. Check out a few of the available spreadsheets to see if one or more fit your needs. [...]
Resource for Personal Finance Spreadsheets…
Get Rich Slowly has compiled a list of personal finance spreadsheets. This is a pretty good list and as the author points out, if you search the web you get a lot of crap until you find some good spreadsheets.
If you are looking for some spreadsheet…
The page that had Patrick Holt’s spreadsheet is down. Any way I can get a copy of it?
awesome links man, I haven’t even checked them out yet, but if they are what you described it is precisely what I was looking for, thanks a lot
JD, I saw that some of the referrals for my website were coming from your site, so I stopped over to say hello! Thanks for the words about my spreadsheet!
Currently I have taken them offline for a while, but they should be back shortly.
Like your site!
[...] The article provides a link to a very rudimentary budgeting spreadsheet. (I’d like to think you can find better options in this list of handy personal finance spreadsheets I shared in May.) It also points to some useful resources: [...]
Well, I know Im late
but I have a note regarding Vinteks compounding sheet. I tried it out and I was stunned how soon I will be a millionaire, then I remembered that none of my previous calculations gave such an optimistic view. Heres why: Vintek is using 10% interest which is a little otimistic in my opinion, where do you get such rates? Maybe when investing in stock and funds cleverly. On average I would say 5% would still be very unlikely to be realised but even with 5% and 2000+ every year I won’t reach above 200,000 (i’m 23) that is because (at least here in germany) they charge 30% (!)tax on your interest. Which I find is totally ridiculous btw.! So that the 5% are just 3.5% in reality.
In 2008 they will even raise it to 44% here o.O AAAAAAARGH
I believe in the US its about 15% but im not too sure about that.
In conclusion: if you hit 46 and your balance doesn’t match your excel sheet in any way, don’t be surprised!
Thank you, thank you! I was just thinking about moving my record keeping from paper to computer so this list is just what I needed to figure out my next step. Love your site!
[...] Track your spending with software. [...]
[...] Handy Personal Finance Spreadsheets (tags: finance money budget spreadsheet excel) [...]
I know this post has been awhile back, but the need of financial spreadsheet is still around. I came up with this for my personal use. It’s very raw and I’m still working on it. But here it is.
http://mypage.iu.edu/~kaiwang/Personal/budget_tracker.xls
I use Karen McCall’s MoneyMinder with my financial counseling clients — to be found at http://www.financialrecovery.com. It not only helps you track your money, create spending plans, but also helps you map your periodic expenses, needs/wants, track your debt reduction, and much more!
The amortization spreadsheet rocks, thanks!
[...] “Excel is awesome,” Kris said when she saw me working on this post. These are just a few examples of how you can use a spreadsheet to explore your finances and answer questions about money. You can do a lot more. In fact, many GRS readers have told me they keep their entire financial lives in a spreadsheet. (And here’s a post from the early days of GRS about handy personal finance spreadsheets.) [...]
The download links for all three spreadsheets in the last bullet are broken. Any chance they can be fixed?
Thanks for a great blog!